


you carry the weight and i take the guilt.

by inquisitioned



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: I FINALLY GOT TO WRITE SOME STEREK, my dumb babies let me show you them, warning for death i guess but it's canon death, wow spoilers in a fix it fic who woulda thunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-19
Updated: 2013-07-19
Packaged: 2017-12-20 17:30:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/889930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inquisitioned/pseuds/inquisitioned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It couldn't get worse-but it always, always did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you carry the weight and i take the guilt.

It’d been three hours since Boyd’s death, and the loft is deathly quiet. Scott and Cora had left with the body to be taken somewhere easily found, a parent’s worst nightmare after their child just returned from going missing—but it was better than leaving him alone, or burying him somewhere away from a family who’d already lost so much. Jennifer had gone home too, with Isaac, surprisingly unenthused and unworried by the entire situation, werewolves, kidnapping, death and all, and it all came down to Derek and Stiles, Derek who’d barely moved in the hours since it happened, just staring at his hands. 

 

It couldn’t get worse—it always, always did.

The reason Stiles had run to him, really, was something he couldn’t explain in words. He’d missed most of it, only seen the alphas in front of Boyd, Derek’s face, the claws, and he could put two and two together, and the sudden empathetic ache was such a punch in the chest that even when Cora pushed past him to get to Boyd, he’d kept going and put his hand on Derek’s shoulder. There was nothing you could ever say to make this okay. Not even the person dying—("Stiles, honey, it’s not your fault I got sick. I’ll be just fine, okay? Just fine.”)—could reassure you, could make the guilt mantling on your shoulders lift, there were no words, nothing that could describe the single repeating thought in the back of your mind, that it’s all your fault. 

He and Derek had always been something different, two completely exact and opposite personalities, an unstoppable force versus an immovable object, but they were more similar under their skin than most people could have known, than they themselves could really admit to. 

 

That’s ultimately why Stiles stayed. He spent most of the time moving around the apartment in a daze, trying to put on his dad’s airs, his ability to look death in the face, and drained the water from the floor, brought a towel and a pair of dry clothes for Derek, setting the towel around his neck for a minute. 

"Dude, you’re gonna catch pneumonia."

So it wasn’t the smoothest, but Derek looked up at Stiles, looking for all the world vulnerable and lost, and he dropped his head for a moment, then slowly took the clothes from him and started to stand, murmuring, “Werewolves can’t catch pneumonia." as he lurched like a man who did have the entire world on his shoulders (the death of two teenagers whose lives he’d promised to change) into the bathroom to get dry.

Stiles stared after him for a little while, then went and sat on the loft’s couch. He was so tired, down to his very bones, tired of murders and darachs and alphas, desperately wishing for Beacon Hills to actually be normal again, maybe, for once in their lives. It was so easy just to stare listlessly into the distance until Derek returned, made his way out of the bathroom with the blood physically off his hands, and dropped himself beside Stiles, letting his hands sit palm up where he could see them, the weapon that’d killed the last shreds of a pack he’d had left. 

 

The night passed on like that, Stiles and Derek, sitting on the couch together, Stiles’ leg a solid line of contact against Derek’s from knee to thigh, while the alpha stared at his hands and Stiles put his own long fingers on his neck, and tried to anchor him back home.


End file.
